LGAR - SYNTHESIS - Land grabbing: New actors in a longstanding process

Abstract

Land is a complex component of the global food system. There is no one definitive function of land; we can stand on it, build on it, grow food on it, extract from it, divide it, and identify with it. Not surprisingly, rising investment in farmland in the wake of the 2007–08 food crisis—popularly referred to as the global “land grab”—has been a contentious issue in the global politics of food and agriculture. There has been no shortage of exchange between scholars, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and civil society on the issue. The preceding papers in this section by Akram-Lodhi, Brent, and Wolford covered, among other things, three distinct issues within the ongoing discussion of global land grabs: dispossession, the agrarian question(s), and access to and control over resources. They also discussed some possible paths forward.